This 1929 early sound film based on a lesser Phillip Barry play takes seriously the very people that Cole Porter so devastatingly satirized in his immortal songs. We even have an arty ballet montage staged by Stanislavski's assistant Richard Boleslavski to prove that pretension is not just a recent occurrence. Bad art has been with us always. This is the film debut of the beautiful and lady-like Anne Harding, the perfect upper class American girl that Katherine Hepburn was to play more successfully a few years later in Barry's best play. Fredric March, the best leading man of the day, does a lot of serious kissing here to justify that he really loves his wife and kid despite his weakness of character. What seemed madly sophisticated then in 1929 seems enormously silly now. After watching this, just put on your favorite Cole Porter album. His songs are still with us to remind us that once upon a time anything went.
Review of Paris Bound
